father's will. May God so bless and reward you, as you deal justice to that lonely girl! "I perceive,' she added, 'she is cursed with her mother's susceptibility; I would almost sooner see her in her grave!' "Alas! that poor girl is now dying of incipient consumption, and yet they will not suffer her mother to watch by her bed-side, or to pay her more than a half-hour's visit! This, to a mother, Myra, is no imaginary trial." "It is a fearful lesson!" sighed Myra; "I would not pursue it farther. What if the girl should die ?"? "God's will be done!" replied the old lady, meekly; "I wish I could read aloud to the world all the examples I have noted of great and glorious women, lost for ever to society, through the defects of education. A judicious husbandman watches the culture of the plant, the soundness of the root, and then knows what he has to look forward to; while we, poor labourers in the moral garden, expect strength from the willow, and docility from the oak. Women are all educated with reference to fashion, which multiplies their trials by diminishing their strength; and-" The old lady was interrupted by the receipt of a letter from Delphine, which she did not read without many tears. "It is over! My daughter is dead! Feel for me, weep for me, pray for me my friend! You, who knew me in the days of my unsubdued youth, pray for me! You, who knew me during the reign of my uncontrolled imagination, pray for me! You, who knew me when I breathed only incense, and heard no voice but the voice of flattery, pray for me! You, who knew me a spotless wife and a joyful mother, pray for me! You, who knew and sought to dispel the clouds with which folly and fashion obscured my days, pray for me! You, who saved me from the depths of despair, and received a polluted creature into the sanctuary of your pure home, pray for me! Pray for me, now and always! but especially now, when my child is dead. She lies before me at this momentthere! Those arms which intwined around me on that night, when first she called me 'mother-the sweetest music I had ever heard; those arms will never, never again press a fallen mother, but still a mother, to that bosom! Oh, if they had only suffered me to remain with her during the last week, it would have been enough! but they would not it was the deepest of all my humiliations. They could not think that the most depraved being who ever existed could contaminate its own child! But I have no right to murmur. It has been ordained that the residue of a woman's life, though it be steeped in tears, cannot atone for one, only one, fault! "Forgive me, my friend, I would not repine, yet Nature heaves within me, when I remember how she entreated that I might be suffered to remain with her. Did I say I had only one fault, one crime to atone for! Alas! my whole life has been a tissue of faults; and, above all, the great one, the greatest of the whole, that I misused the talents God had given me; and, instead of becoming distinguished for all that should make woman like the eastern perfume, whose fragrance increases the longer it exists, I have been "Heaven preserve me! I thought the pale corse sighed ! "Oh! spirit of my child! look on thy erring mother, and, if it be permitted, meet her when death shall separate, what might have been a glorious spirit, from earth's passions and earth's clay! Did I write-glorious spirit' I wrote even as the heathen did. Humility is the Christian's glory, and faith his shield. Shield me, O faith! from my own pride, and humble me to the cross which was borne by an atoning Saviour." "How beautiful she looks! -they have left us quite alone. Her mother is trusted at last-with what? the ashes of her child! My husband meant not this- he could not mean it! "Come to me, my friend; this death-bed has no terror! Young and beautiful, she smiles at what philosophers and kings tremble but to think upon. I would fain be thankful that she is gone; if she had lived, the cruel world, perhaps a heartless husband, might have called her mother what she was! it would have killed the gentle child; or she might have lived to suffer, as I have suffered! "Come; we can sit together here, and talk of time and of eternity; and you shall reason me to what you will. Constance, my heart is broken; it lies there, within her shroud, buried in her bosom! Will you believe that my ambition breathed new life, when I thought on what she would be; and, though cut off from her society, I planned, and planned, and triumphed in her triumphs! My imagination was at work as for myself; and the visions of my youth returned again! Can you forgive me this? —it is a frank confession. "Come to me, and, as you have often done extract wisdom from affliction !" THE END. NEW-YORK: WALLIS & NEWELL, PUBLISHERS, SOLD BY THE PRINCIPAL BOOKSELLERS THROUGHOUT THE UNITED STATES. 1835. TO THE READER. THIRTEEN years ago, when on my way to join my regiment, then on the point of embarking at Portsmouth for India, I stopped one night at a very small country inn, not a hundred miles from Fort William. Here I not only slept, but over-slept myself; so that it was with no small "hubble bubble, toil and trouble," mingled with many an execration of my black fellow, who had neglected to wake me at the proper hour in the morning, that I got myself and my luggage under weigh at the needful hour. Several days after we had sailed from Portsmouth, on opening one of my trunks, I was puzzled to find in it a large, rather much-worn portfolio, which I knew did not belong to me. "What is that, or where did it come from?" said I to Yorick. “Why, Massa, Yorick don't know. It was on de table in de room where you sleep at lying under Massa's desk, so Yorick put it in trunk too." After bestowing a few pithy epithets upon this most sensible of servants, I ceased to think of the portfolio till weeks after, when weary of the monotony of a long voyage, it occurred to me as a possible source of mischievous diversion to myself and my brother officers. We accordingly turned out its contents, and I can appeal to the many, still living, who partook in the amusement they furnished on board the S- -lle, if they ever can forget the bright summer evenings spent in their perusal ? They consisted of detached portions of a journal, which appeared to have been regularly kept for a considerable length of time; in which the parts now given to the public were mingled with many matters of mere family interest, or private feeling. The names of persons and places were given at full length; and I can vouch for the perfect accuracy with which the anecdotes are related, and the characters portrayed; for in "Simon's Panorama," (the name we gave the portfolio,) many of us recognised, sometimes with much astonishment, friends, acquaintances, and relatives. On my return from India, after an absence of eleven years, I wrote to Simon, stating the manner in which I had become possessed of the portfolio, and requesting to know how I could restore it to its rightful owner. My letter was returned, marked, "No such person to be found." I was not to be thus balked. By the aid of an almanac I found out the name of the parish clergyman; and from him, in reply to a letter which I had addressed to him upon the subject, I |